The moderating role of tough love on relations between servant leadership and follower outcomes

Is servant leadership really a Disneyland-inspired fantasy of sunshine, lollipops, and hand-holding that makes followers complacent and lowers the bottom line of organizations, as critics claim? This criticism overlooks that servant leaders, striving to bring out the full potential in followers, do not only give positive strokes but may also provide followers with critical feedback. To assess the role of critical feedback in mitigating the flaws of servant leadership raised by critics, this study introduces tough love, the delivery of criticism with a positive tone and clear intent to help recipients overcome their deficiencies. We hypothesize that the relationship between servant leadership and key outcomes, such as follower performance, is strengthened the more servant leaders provide followers with tough love. We contend that tough love is appreciated by followers, solidifies relationships with their leaders, and helps them to grow through self-expansion. We reason that this growth benefits their work behaviors and attitudes. With multi-source field data covering three points in time, controlling for positive and negative feedback and prior levels of dependent variables, tough love is shown to moderate relations between servant leadership and both in-role performance and organizational citizenship behaviors, with mixed results for creativity and turnover intentions.